We asked four organizers running four completely different events why they record: an AI megaconference, a local-government association, a startup investment circuit, and a wildfire recovery nonprofit. Each one named something the others didn't.

Already recording and want more from the footage? Our guide on how to get more value from your event recordings covers what to do once you have it.

An AI Megaconference: Monique Abed, Ai4

At Ai4 2025, Geoffrey Hinton left the stage and his session was edited and delivered the same day. CNN picked it up shortly after. That is what recording looks like when an event treats it as part of the show. 

Ai4 fills The Venetian with thousands of executives and more than 1,000 speakers across dozens of parallel tracks, so no attendee catches more than a fraction live. "We're so content heavy," says Monique Abed, Director of Operations. People come to learn about their specific sector, and with that many rooms running at once, the program outruns anyone's schedule.

Which is why Ai4 frames recording as something attendees get. "It's just a feature that we like to offer to our attendees," Monique says, so they can go back and review sessions any time, or share one with a colleague who wasn't in the room.

A Local-Government Association: Scott Lehtonen, 3CMA

3CMA is the professional association for city, county, and district communicators across the US. Executive Director Scott Lehtonen started from a problem his members feel directly: "There are a lot of conferences and there's limited budgets and time."

So he did the math on his own event. "You can only be in one place at once, and therefore you're really only able to attend about 25% of the conference." Recording closes that gap twice over: it covers the sessions an attendee had to skip, and it lets them revisit the ones they actually sat in. Multi-track events are where recording stops being a nice extra and starts being the only way most of your program gets seen.

A Startup Investment Circuit: Faisal Mushtaq, TechCon Global

TechCon Global has run innovation and investment conferences since 2019, across San Diego, Austin, Dallas, the Bay Area, and Toronto, connecting founders with investors and students. Founder and CEO Faisal Mushtaq has recorded every one of them.

"We record everything and make it available so that the rest of the world, who couldn't be here, can benefit from the wisdom that was shared in those dialogs," he says. Not the sessions that went well. Everything. "This has been our mission for the last seven years," he adds.

For him the recording isn't documentation of the event. It's how the event reaches everyone who wasn't in the room.

A Wildfire Recovery Nonprofit: Jennifer Gray Thompson, After the Fire USA

After the Fire USA helps communities recover, rebuild, and reimagine after megafires. Its annual Wildfire Leadership Summit brings survivors together with the people shaping recovery policy. 

For CEO Jennifer Gray Thompson, recording does three jobs at once. It sends speakers home with something professional they can carry through their careers. It democratizes the information, in her words, so anyone can watch on their own time instead of only in the room. And it captures the summit in a moment, letting the organization see how it evolves.

Then there is the reason that matters most to the people watching. The recordings, she says, bring "hope for people that they're not alone when this happens."

Four Events, Four Answers

An AI megaconference. A local-government association. A startup circuit. A wildfire recovery nonprofit. Different audiences, different budgets, different definitions of success. 

Monique framed it as something attendees receive. Scott did the math on how little of a multi-track program anyone actually sees. Faisal treats it as the way one event reaches everyone who couldn't be there. Jennifer thinks about what the speaker carries away and what the archive shows years later.

Each answer fits their event. The question is which one matters most for yours.

This is our job at SlidesLive. We have recorded more than 4,000 events, from 30-track conferences to intimate summits, and we handle the whole path from camera to post-production to a searchable home for the content in the SlidesLive Library.

📢 Wondering what that would look like for your event? Get an estimate and we'll walk you through it.